April was National Child Abuse Prevention Month. All over the country, advocacy organizations mobilized to help us understand some key facts about child maltreatment, a hidden and all-too-common danger of childhood: [1]

1. Infants and toddlers are at the greatest risk for maltreatment, which can interfere with kids’ normal brain development. In fact, children are most at risk of abuse in their first months of life.
2. As they grow up, abused and neglected children are at risk for significant health problems, difficulty at school, and trouble at work. They are also more likely to replicate abusive patterns with their own romantic partners and children.

4. For every 1000 Colorado kids, at least 8 of them — that we know about — are abused or neglected. That number is higher in counties with higher poverty rates.

Poverty is very hard on children and their parents. We know that. But not all of us may be aware that it increases the risk of mistreating children, which will make all the challenges of growing up in poverty that much worse.

At Growing Home, a significant majority of our shelter and transitional housing clients have trauma in their background. We see adults with abuse in their past in our other programs as well.

Our Incredible Years parenting classes frequently turn into group therapy sessions. Parents come to our classes to learn new ways to parent their kids differently—often without connecting their own parenting challenges with the mistreatment many experienced themselves. Learning positive parenting tools often helps parents come to terms with the violence and emotional abuse in their own childhoods.

In fact, one couple recently enrolled in our Incredible Years class. Attending the class led the husband to describe to his wife his own experiences being abused—which she never knew about until then. They had come to the class to learn how to help their seriously depressed son. But they found themselves learning more about their own emotional experiences and needs. They ended up learning tools to deal better with their stresses without harming their children. Their son’s depression got better. The couple is now planning a ceremony to renew their vows.

We know what it takes to help children break the cycle of poverty and close the huge achievement gap between low income students and their classmates. We need to give their parents tools to meet their families’ basic needs. But, just as important, we need to help them learn how to nurture their children. When children feel loved and supported, they can succeed. For example, when our after-school program educators encourage intensive social and emotional development alongside academic help, those children do better in school.

And when parents feel nurtured — supported by their family and their community, capable of meeting parenting challenges with knowledge and love, and able to provide basic food and shelter — then their children will be able to face their own challenges and win.

We know how to do this work because we do it every day and see the difference it makes. National programs like HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters) and Parents as Teachers support families’ social and emotional development. Educators visit families in their homes with tools — sometimes toys made from common household items, like jam jars and diaper wipe boxes — for play-based interactions. They help parents understand normal child development. And they support families who may need extra resources, like evaluation for speech delays or an autism spectrum disorder.

With these programs, parents feel supported by their community. They feel empowered to deal with the common challenges of parenting. And they feel stronger in their adult relationships.

These are methods that work. They are based on results. And they help the children and families that need it most.

To break the cycle of poverty, we need to think beyond the food pantry. While basic services are very important, and much needed in our still-down economy, they don’t solve all of a family’s problems.
To break the cycle of poverty, we need to nurture parents and help them nurture their children.

Teva Sienicki is president & CEO of Growing Home, one of Denver’s leading providers of wrap-around poverty interventions.